With new comp World of Warcraft crashes constantly as soon as it loads

Okay, I just made myself a new PC specifically for gaming. I'm new to this forum (sorry for the noobness), but if you can spec my profile, I copied every part I bought for my computer so you can see my hardware specs.

(This game worked fine on my old Dell, with only 1 gig of ram, but I specifically bought 2 to up my FPS or at least upgrade the performance =/.)

I installed WoW fresh with my new hard drive, and when I went to load it, It would load the beginning movie, and crash instantly. It would make a quick little screeching noise, and my entire computer would freeze. Even after installing my newest video, sound, even mobo drivers, mostly all the drivers I could think of, it still crashed, restart after restart. I am thinking this problem is something with my RAM, but I was able to instal Battlefield 2 and run it perfectly. I am just looking to narrow down what could be the problem, because I don't want to be so quick as to mail my 250$ video card back, or any other part for that matter. My other friends suspect maybe one stick of ram is corrupted or bad, but i don't know why it would run BF2 easier, which is more RAM demanding. input appreciated. thanks so much

Edit 1: I ran my RAM check one time through, wasn't sure if it would just repeat.. I used www.memtest86.com 's program, burned it to disc, etc etc.

I got 8 errors when the check got to test 5, but i read the diagnostic on the page and it might not be bad RAM because:

Test 5 [Block move, 64 moves]

This test stresses memory by using block move (movsl) instructions and is based on Robert Redelmeier's burnBX test. Memory is initialized with shifting patterns that are inverted every 8 bytes. Then 4mb blocks of memory are moved around using the movsl instruction. After the moves are completed the data patterns are checked. Because the data is checked only after the memory moves are completed it is not possible to know where the error occurred. The addresses reported are only for where the bad pattern was found. Since the moves are constrained to a 8mb segment of memory the failing address will always be less than 8mb away from the reported address. Errors from this test are not used to calculate BadRAM patterns.

Edit 2: I just ran BF2 and played in a server for about 4 minutes before my comp made a tiny little screech sound again and froze up entirely. past this point all my friends with whatever computer knowledge they have say it *has* to be the ram. any input would give me peace of mind... thx.

well, I didn't OC anything, but i dont have another PCI express card to test it out on, my old rig had a 128mb Radeon 9800x pro in it, and a pentium processor, idk if it would make any difference. I still think maybe the RAM is defective? like i thought BF2 ran smooth originally because it loaded up,and WoW just froze, but any game I go onto will freeze withing 5 minutes as to me loading it up. as for the noise it would make, it would be an abrupt freeze, followed by a screech type sound,very quick. past this point my entire computer would be frozen, and i'd have to restart. i doubt the games have anything to do with this at this point, other than the RAM being bad, I hope these are signs of bad ram though, it's an easy fix.

Just because a mobo supports DDR400, that doesn't mean you NEED DDR400. It just means that if you put in DDR400 it will run at 400MHz while if you put it into a mobo that only supports up to DDR333 then it would only run at 333MHz. Can you borrow any RAM from someone else to try it out? If not, take out sticks one at a time and try every possible combination of sticks (i.e. try all your sticks alone and all possible combinations of 2 and 3 sticks) and see if it is one of them that is messed up. If this doesn't work, it MAY be your PSU, though that is unlikely if you can run other things fine. If it's not the RAM I think it is probably the motherboard. If you try different combos of your RAM and try someone elses RAM and that doesn't work, see if you can borrow a friend's motherboard.

that seems like the next thing i was gonna try, rearranging the ram sticks.... although before this thinking back to like three days ago i was having problems booting anything because i couldn't get a the bios screen. i spent 6hrs taking everything apart, and finally i just took all the ram out, and put like 2 sticks in, and everything booted up and i got a bios screen. i got the other 2 in without a hitch past that, and kind of did the "if it works, don't question it" method, until it proved to be unsuccessful today after i painstakingly updated and installed everything and tried to play games. it's around midnight here, so i'm not gonna upset myself taking out ram now as i have to crash soon... but i'll take some sticks out tomorrow, re arrange them, and see if any are faulty. I don't think it can be anything else though, because i don't see any signs of the problem being the video card, my computer isn't getting the (blue screen of death) or any picture issues... you might be right on the mobo though, although i don't know if anything would be wrong with it as everything boots fine...

Have you reinstalled a fresh copy of windows xp, or is this the hard drive from your dell with windows xp already on it? If so you are having driver conflict from the previous computer and need to reinstall a fresh copy of windows. Windows CDs cost about $100.

yeah, it is a fresh legal copy of windows... and i reformatted the old dell HD after transferring allof my important files to the new HD... my comp was taking in the old dell HD as a removable drive so that was the only way to make it register as a HD, which it did... i re installed all my games fresh though. i might have another theory though... im not sure exactly how ram works but i idle at like 350 mb of ram without activity, and when i start the WoW game maybe it jumps up in how much ram im using, on the second stick and it crashes my comp... maybe the second stick is bad? i dont know exactly howcomps use the ram.

sharkfood, I love you... that's exactly what I had to do. This was the thing that caused ALL my problems, ONE bad ram stick in my second slot. thank you so much everyone for helping, I know the biggest pain is fixing a computer is figuring out what to fix... but thanks so much

I have the exact same problem with WOW. The difference is that I don't have a problem with any other game in fact I played NWN2 without any difficulty just this morning. Should I try switching the RAM around?

yes, switch the ram around the slots also get some Compressed air and clean out the system including the slots ( like the PCI slots, RAM slots and all the fans / wires ) to clean out any built up dirt & dust and that should work

Well I have 2x1Gig sticks of RAM. I removed one and now WoW works fine. Strange. Why does it do that? I had a bit of trouble with some of my other games crashing at various times but I have a feeling that this will stop now. Fingers crossed anyway. Thanks for your help!!!

The reason that it crashes is because sometimes dirt or dust gets into the slots and builds up over time and causes the RAM ( or what ever it's dealing with ) to start messing up so when you clean it, it fixes the problem

cool. I'll have to see whether I can find one of those compressed air thingy's. Thinking back though I did have some problems with installed games when i got this computer a couple of months back. It was a little frustrating cause I didn't expect to have to deal with so many crashes in exchange for better graphics...